Some thoughts
There is a curious correlation, as well. There are those who are cynical about life, who blame their cynicism on other people. Curiously, many of these also seem to enjoy the idea of being cynical of, opposed to, and condescending toward other people and the idea of civilization. It is as if they are quietly hoping that civilization will fail so that they no longer have to pretend. If we were in a fictional setting, this would be more easily understood. In the fantasy world of Steven Brust's Dragaera, for instance, the Jhereg kill for money, the Dragons kill for honor, and the Dzur kill for fun. (You can replace "kill" with "fight", but it all amounts to the same.) Interestingly, and perhaps predictably, each group finds something perverse about the other's motivations.
If we think about it in terms of capitalism, 'tis true that this seems to be the way of things. Buying and selling seems a necessity of socially-cooperative life. But it is not enough to simply recognize the utility. Some people are compelled to turn the whole thing into a competition, as if having disproportionately more than one's neighbors is somehow a virtue.
And I think the cynicism is a device to shout down one's internal doubts and fears. But as we see with people like OJ Simpson and Robert Chambers:
Guilty conscience? Robert Chambers, the "Preppy Killer", entering
court last month for arraignment on cocaine-distribution charges that could
put the killer behind bars for life. (Photo: Lazano/AP)
The accused Brentwood killer and the Preppy Killer both, essentially, got away. Simpson's attorneys exploited shoddy police work and brutalized the DA's office in order to force the acquittal of a man most would agree is guilty. Robert Chambers and his attorneys convinced a jury that one could do that much damage to a victim and have it still be an accident.
Now, these are extreme examples, admittedly. On a more mundane level, I've watched the transformation occur. A point I've made about the Iraqi Bush War: if I had told people, back around, say, 1985, what their addiction to Ronald Reagan would bring,
nobody would believe me. My
father would have been gravely offended. He was, after all, a Reagan Republican. He despised criticism of corporations, believed that workers were somehow not important to the business equation, and once asserted in the wake of the Kathy Lee child labor scandal, that exploited children ought to be happy to have the chance to be exploited. When the Reebok board fired a bunch of workers and immediately rewarded themselves with bonuses that, all told, would have kept those workers employed for a period of
years, I was disgusted. My father was appalled at my outburst. "When you say those things about business," he explained, "it hurts.
I'm a businessman, and it hurts to hear my son talk about me that way."
Years later, I had a chance to ask him about that. "Did you pay your workers the least you could get away with?" No. He paid them over their market value. When one of his employees failed to get a job with the county because he was overqualified (on a voc-tech welding certificate) to hold a stop sign at a road-construction site, my dad gave him a raise; the guy was only looking for the road job because he needed the money. This doesn't sound like what I was criticizing. And he knew it then.
What finally cracked him, though, was when his business partners finally showed their business colors. The good people he had fallen in with yanked his share of the business right out from under him for nepotism. His marriage collapsed, he no longer had a buffer to numb him against the tiny daggers of his outlook. Instead of sinking into his bitterness, he retreated onto his boat, completely flipped out, and I have to tell you that the man I've known for the last five years is different from the transitional character I'd known for the eight or so before that, which is different from the person I'd known for the whole of my life before that.
One day, on an occasion that my father had come to town just because there was lots going on and he couldn't escape it, he came walking into the house with this look on his face. The first words out of his mouth were not, "Hello". They were not, "How could you knock her up!" He just looked at me, heaved a sigh, and said, "I owe you an apology. A big one."
The look on his face actually made me think he'd just run over my cat. I mean, he actually looked
stricken.
But what he was apologizing for, it turns out, was a general body of rhetoric, the things he said to me when I was twelve or fifteen. He just looked at me, said, "This whole thing. These Enron guys. Wall Street. I didn't know. I didn't mean to be so ...."
And what the hell can you actually say? There is that part that appreciates the validation, but, for the most part, I'd put that behind me years before. I'd dropped much of my hard assessment of my father's outlook during the time he was flipping out on his boat because I knew that was exactly what he was dealing with. His whole world literally leapt in the air and landed on him like a heap of bricks.
The difference between then and now, the man of old and new, is simply that he no longer tries to justify deviations from his expressed character. Consider the paradox: the anticommunist father says, "Do you want to be able to just worry about yourself? Or do you want to have to worry about everyone else?" And then the child is sent off to church to study the Bible and learn concepts like, "God first, others second, self third", and why we are our brothers' keepers. Dad vs. God? Hmm ... and it was probably a lucky thing (for him) that American Christians generally don't like to remind that one of Communism's most famous slogans can be found in the Bible, and attributed to Jesus Christ. (Seriously, "from each, to each" was one of my father's biggest complaints about Communism.)
What's funny is that I've rejected Christianity and would like to dissolve the Communist Party in the U.S., while my father has rejected the ferocious capitalism of his former outlook. We both, however, accept "from each, to each", and there is a reason why.
That reason is almost a cornerstone of individual outlook. It treads directly on the notion of
empathy v. envy.
I would assert that the difference coincides strongly with how one would answer an abstract question about the individual and society. Do individuals exist for the benefit of society? No. Does society exist for the benefit of individuals? It would seem that our species has selected naturally as such. Therefore, how does the individual stand in relation to society?
Many of the cynics who run with the "envy" model tend toward libertarian political arguments that would rather tear away at liberalism and demean notions of civility because they perceive civilized society as oppressive against them as individuals. These include the ardent capitalists, the absolutely freaky portion of gun owners who won't be satisfied until we're all packing heat, the warmongers, and, strangely, a portion of Christianity. At least, that's what it looks like in the U.S. These are the people who want the roads, but don't want to pay for them, who want the military budget, but who blame Democrats for taxes. They despise the homeless and the needy, would seek a Spartan revival. Yet, for some reason, these people tend to want to be thought of as virtuous; they are offended if one points out Sparta, or asserts a lack of compassion. Their assertions tend toward a relationship in which the individual owes little or nothing to society or their fellow human being.
The "empathy" model, one with which I'm personally more familiar, looks at a symbiotic relationship between the individual and society. We recognize at some level that society has a certain evolutionary value, and also that society does not work without the willing participation of its members. We recognize at some level that no story ever begins; it's merely a point of marking an advent that is not arbitrary. This, for instance, is why the less intelligent the criminal is, the more sympathy we have. We recognize that society demands certain outcomes; as long as we run this pseudo-capitalist global economy in which we starve people in order to add another zero to the end of a Western CEO's bank balance, in which over a billion people live without regular potable water because it's just not profitable to get them clean water, where we spend enough on wars we choose to initiate to bring tremendous change to societies at home and abroad, there will
always be hungry people, there will always be desperate poverty, and there will always be stupid wars and stupid crime.
One way of looking at it would be to consider an essay by Melissa McEwan about
why rape jokes aren't funny:
One of their guests, a man called Homeless Charlie, says, “I’ll tell you what—what’s that George Bush bitch, um, Rice…? Condoleezza Rice? … I’d love to fuck that bitch dead, man,” at which point the rest of the studio erupts into laughter. Homeless Charlie says again, “I’ll fuck that bitch to death,” to which Opie/Anthony reply, “I just imagine the horror in Condoleezza Rice’s face—” [uproarious laughter and interjection “When she realizes what’s going on!”] “—as you’re just like holding her down and fucking her.” More uproarious laughter, prompting Homeless Charlie to continue: “Punch her all in the fucking face—shut up, bitch!” Says Opie/Anthony: “That’s exactly what I meant!” [raucous laughter] ....
.... Honestly, I’m not sure I can accurately convey how deeply upsetting this clip is. It pisses me off to no fucking end—I can feel the anger twisting in my gut and curling its tendrils around my ribs like its own seething entity—but it also frightens me. The first time I listened to it, goosebumps raised across my flesh and the hairs stood up on the back of my neck. The hatred of women is palpable; the urge to dominate and destroy. Fuck that bitch to death ....
.... Naturally, I’ll be called a humorless feminist. Fine. If not laughing at a bunch of men sitting around talking about fucking women to death makes me a humorless feminist, then I wear the badge proudly—because I’m not just a humorless feminist; I’m a bitch who was nearly fucked to death. Isn’t that just fucking hilarious?
I’m a bitch who tore out her fingernails by the roots in the carpet trying to crawl away from someone who nearly fucked me to death. I’m a bitch whose face was smashed against a stone fireplace because I fought back, leaving me groggy and bleeding from one end—and with a permanently chipped tooth as a souvenir—while I got torn apart at the other. I’m a bitch who was left lying in a pool of her own blood, which I later cleaned up so my parents wouldn’t find out, because I was 16 years old and scared and ashamed and grew up in a culture that tells bitches who nearly get fucked to death that it’s their fault. Isn’t that just fucking hilarious?
("
Rape is Hilarious")
The question is one of reactions. Does one understand what such humor can do to rape survivors? Generally, no, unless you've been there, so a better question is,
Does one care? Are you one who actually enjoys agitating the scars of suffering for your own humor? What? You're not guilty of that? You're just making a joke? They need to grow up, get over it, move on with life?
If it was your mother, would you accept the implication that she deserved it, she needed it, and she should be thankful?
The thing is that many people separate from society at this point. If we all snuck over to the Vietnam vet's house and set off a bunch of explosions that caused him to flash back and flip out, would it be hilarious?
I run in a circle that makes some pretty hard jokes. But we all have certain signals, usually a sound--a variation on clearing one's throat or coughing--that lets our mates know when they're in difficult territory. Now, I can talk race politics with the black man. I can criticize the "black community". But the one thing I'm not going to do is ask him why the nigger crossed the road.
Is it
really oppressive and violative that we are expected to be polite, or at least allow people a minimum of human dignity? I mean, think about it: You're
violated because people don't appreciate that you went out of your way to ridicule and demean the survivor of a horrible event? We're supposed to fear for our sons and daughters because there are people out there who want to rape them, but after they're raped, we're should make jokes about it?
Is there no difference between cracking a joke among men over a bong hit and getting paid to broadcast it over the airwaves to millions?
Can people really
not tell the difference?
Now take that example and start pulling back to a wider angle. Because for some people, such specific ridicule, such cruelty, is perfectly within their right. For some people, to go out of one's way to be cruel is their
right. To
hurt people for
laughs is a
right.
This idea does not fit well with the empathy model. Practically speaking, we see what happens when feelings start getting trampled left and right. The resulting chaos is, generally, never good for society unless we want to get into an obscure and complicated (and, seemingly, stupid) debate about whether it is best to control the population with, say, birth control, or wars. Should we control the population by not adding to it, or by proactively subtracting from it?
While the empirical outlook is about all we have that is real, the practical shortcomings of empiricism and the apparently impervious illusion of life and civilization make certain demands of people. Everybody will accept that sacrifices and compromises are necessary. A major practical difference is the form of obligation and the identity of the obliged.
We see this across the political spectrum in the United States.
• Some express that equality means that one group (e.g. traditionalists) ought to be able to demand compromises of another (e.g. homosexuals) so that we might all be equal (e.g. traditionalists have the power to dictate homosexuals' legal status).
• The bus is the favorite mode of mass transportation among Seattle residents who do not ride the bus. (People who complain about traffic but will not use public transportation are also those who vote to keep public transportation so undesirable.)
• Many of those folks will also complain about carpooling. And yet, at a time when oil prices are skyrocketing and environmental considerations suggest strongly the need for change, these folks will do their part by putting a yellow ribbon magnet on the back of their single-occupancy gas-guzzler.
• There is some degree of correlation between those who own guns to protect themselves, and those who vote for conditions that actually help raise the crime rate.
The list goes on. Free speech? ("My First Amendment right is violated until
he is silenced!") Education? ("My religious outlook, although scientifically untestable, should be considered a science!")
There is a curious correlation, as well, within the "envy" model, of the ideas that there
is a standard of human dignity, and that the individuals who apply the envy model are entitled to decide what that standard is, and, thus, who gets to be considered human.
And there's a big indicator right there: with the envy model, the cutoff for who gets to be human seems to occur somewhere within the species. Among the empathy model, we're not so sure
where that line occurs. Some primates, for instance, come damn close to qualifying. To the other, we're not sure what that means. Bringing primates into society seemed to inflict suffering that verged on emotional. Some do visualize, fantasize. This is unsettling inasmuch as I can't figure out what it means. There are others, though, who just don't care; if the gender of your sexual partner makes you subhuman, the bonobos and chimps haven't a chance.
